If you've been following my blog, you may remember that we are currently looking for a new home. I've had my eye on a specific property that I just fell in love with (online anyway, we haven't actually gone to see it in person yet). It looks like it would be ideal for our large household. Out in the country, several acres, lots more space, more land to garden, more bedrooms for the kids, and while it's a longer drive to work for Tony, it would make me feel so much better to get out of the city. I've never been a city girl, and living where you can't look out your window without looking into your neighbor's window is incredibly stressful for me. The price tag is a little high, but with strict budgeting, we could make it work. We have an appointment to talk to a real estate agent tomorrow. I have no idea what to expect, or what we will have to do to get everything lined up - or if we even qualify to buy a house at all. I have faith that if this is meant to be, everything will work out.

And in other news, I finally bought curtains. We've lived here for 12 years now and never had curtains. My Mother-in-law had planned to sew us new curtains, but then she got sick and was unable. Other things took priority (as they rightly should), and as she got sicker, curtains became altogether unimportant. Having put them up tonight, I can't believe how much nicer it feels to sit in the living room and not notice the neighbors across the street coming and going. Of course, and perhaps oddly enough, I picked curtains that would match the floors in the new house. We're already making plans on where gardens, out-buildings, the rabbit barn, and the kids' playset will go. The kids discuss it as if it's only a matter of time before we move into that house. They have plans of playing in the woods, exploring the land, claiming their very own bedrooms, and they're all very excited. Hopefully after our meeting tomorrow afternoon I will have more information and at least something of an idea on where we stand and what we need to do next.

And it's snowing... We're supposed to get "up to 6 inches" over the next day and a half. What fun!

I know I shared the pumpkin pie recipe last year (check it out HERE), but I wanted to share that we did it again this year, but this time with our own home-grown pumpkins. The "Blue #2" pumpkin seed that we winter sowed almost a year ago grew into a fantastic orange "Cinderella" type pumpkin like something we've never seen before. So of course, not wanting the pumpkins to go to waste, I decided to try them in the pie recipe. Last year we tried pie pumpkin and a white pumpkin. I have to say that pumpkin pie is pretty delicious no matter what kind of pumpkin you use. I made a trial pie shortly before Thanksgiving to see how it would turn out. It was devoured by all who saw it (and wanted seconds). The first pumpkin yielded 11 cups of "slop" (my recipe calls for 3 cups per pie, so 3-2/3 pies worth). I froze it in measured 3-cup amounts. My Dad wanted to try his hand at his old recipe - which is very similar but slightly different than mine, so he used some of the pumpkin glop for his pie (his recipe called for 4 cups).

I decided to repeat my recipe and we could have a head-to-head taste test to see who's pumpkin pie was better (though really, it's all the same pumpkin so I knew it would be close). I used the last of the 3-cup bags and made a third pumpkin pie. While I was at it, I also processed a second pumpkin (this one yielded 14 cups of glop) and again froze it in 3-cup increments for future pie baking.

One "Cinderella" Blue #2 pumpkin, cut in half. Lots of good flesh, lots of seeds, and nice dry strings.

All the seeds and guts removed

I got equal amounts of seed and "guts" from this pumpkin - all the guts got tossed out into the woods for the deer to eat. The seeds are saved for planting next year and trading.

Doesn't look like much, but some evaporated milk and pumpkin glop and this is what pie is made of!

This was my first year doing some of the Thanksgiving meal cooking. Usually my Mom does it all, but this year she was working long shifts and needed some help. So I made a pie, cooked one of the two turkeys, got the sweet potatoes baked and mixed, peeled potatoes for mashed potatoes, cooked the turkey "extras" and helped #3 set up a veggie tray. After dinner, the pies were both excellent so we declared it a draw.

Let me start by saying that I found a recipe online and had every intention of making it per the recipe. However, stranded at home I realized I was missing an ingredient (oregano) so I substituted Rosemary instead and then tweaked the recipe a bit here and there. It turned out wonderfully, so here is my version of the recipe.

Melt the butter in a skillet on medium heat. Brown chicken in the melted butter for 3-5 minutes. (I used 2 tablespoons at a time and cooked three breasts at a time for 5 minutes each side as they were pretty thick)

Put browned chicken into crock pot

In the same skillet, add the Water, Lemon Juice, Garlic, and Bouillon. Bring to a boil, then pour it over the chicken in the crock pot.

Cover and cook on High for 3 hours or on Low for 6 hours (we did Low).

Add the Parsley 15-20 minutes before the end of the cooking time.

This was enough for our entire family of seven for dinner, plus two breasts for the home-schooled kids to have for lunch the next day. The recipe said it could be served with rice or pasta. The only complaint on this meal was how bland the pasta was. I wish there had been more "sauce" with the chicken. It was delicious and moist. We will definitely be making this recipe again!

Take a piece of your meat mix, roll into a ball, and hide a cube of the mozzarella cheese inside.

Pour enough Spaghetti/Maranara sauce in the crock pot to cover the bottom, and place meatballs spaced just far enough that they don't touch. Layer more sauce, then more meatballs, until all meatballs are in the crock pot. Pour the rest of the sauce over the meatballs.

Cook on High for 2 to 2-1/2 hours (we cooled it for 4-1/2-5 hours on low)

​It was alright. I'm not a huge fan of meatballs to begin with. A couple of the kids did ask for seconds, and this recipe did make enough meatballs for 3 per person for seven people (plus a few extra).

I've been using the new laundry soap and I must admit, I'm impressed. It leaves the clothes smelling pleasant, fresh, and even takes the odor out of the diapers! Though it still takes two rounds with the diapers (as it always has). I plan on making another batch to offer to my parents to let them try it out and see what they think of it.

On Thursday I made dinner. It was moist and delicious. I will share the recipe in my next blog post.

Today I baked one of the mystery cross-breed pumpkins. It was wonderful. I cut it in half and removed the seeds. The seeds are thick and dark colored just like the one I planted to grow these, and in total they filled a cereal bowl. The remainder of the "guts" that I scraped out wouldn't have even filled a cereal bowl. I tossed the scrapings out in the woods at my parents' house for the deer. I cut the pumpkin halves in half (pumpkin was quartered), and put it in stoneware pans, with water, covered in foil to bake. After 90 minutes in the oven (at 350 degrees), it was soft, and I was able to scrape it all out into a bowl. I used a hand mixer to puree the pumpkin, and (after it cooled) I measured it out into freezer bags. My recipe for pumpkin pie calls for three cups, so I put three cups into each bag. This one pumpkin produced 11 cups of puree - or 3-2/3 pies worth. I still have four more of these pumpkins (one smaller and three bigger), so I think we will have plenty of pie to go around all winter long! It's just a matter of processing them all. But since pumpkin is a winter squash, there's no rush. They shouldn't go bad for a while anyway. The seeds are drying now. I anticipate they will be ready to trade in about a month. I like to make sure they are fully dry before bagging them up, even if it means leaving them out much longer than needed... especially since these are such thick seeds.

I couldn't sleep the other night so I stayed up looking up information on homesteading. While we are just beginning to dip our toes in, it seems there's all kinds of people along the way doing homesteading in various ways and to various degrees. I don't think we'll be setting off to live as hermits on the side of a mountain completely "off the grid," but I do aim to be a little more self-sufficient. I'd like to know where my food comes from, know that it's not GMO, no pesticides, no herbicides, no added chemicals - completely organic, and in the case of meat, raised and dispatched humanely. And the pride that comes with growing your own food, having experienced it this year - is fantastic.

In looking up homesteading, I came across a simple recipe to make laundry detergent (check out the original recipe here). It just so happens that I'm on the last few drops of our regular liquid detergent and won't be able to buy it any more. It's from one of those club things and we're discontinuing our membership. Anyway, it sounded pretty simple, so today I went ahead and bought the supplies.

Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda (not baking soda) - 55 oz - $3.84

First you measure out one cup of Arm and Hammer Super Washing Soda. Make sure it's not baking soda. Add in one cup of 20 Mule Team Borax. Mix together.

20 Mule Team Borax - 65oz box - $3.96

Then comes the fun part. You'll need to use a cheese grater to grate one full bar of Ivory soap. The original recipe called for Fels-Naptha soap, but someone mentioned that it was full of bad chemicals, and sure enough at the store there's actually a warning right on it that you shouldn't have it touch your skin. Not something I want to be washing #5's diapers in! The recipe said that Ivory soap could be substituted as it's easier to find. I had no problem finding all of the ingredients (including the Fels-Naptha) at our local Menards.

Ivory Soap (with aloe) 10-pack - $3.97

I did end up buying a cheese grater too, which cost me $4.97. So far the total investment is $16.74, including a tool I can use indefinitely, and enough bars of soap to make ten batches (I will need to buy more Borax and Washing Soda to use up all the Ivory soap).

Grated Ivory soap with the new cheese (soap) grater.

The last step is to mix all of the ingredients together and make sure they're equally distributed. So you've now got

1 cup Borax1 cup Washing Soda1 (grated) bar of Ivory soap

Supposedly just two tablespoons per load will wash your clothes and leave them smelling fresh. There are 16 tablespoons in a cup, so each "batch" will do roughly 32 loads of laundry. To start I made up an entire plastic bin of this mix - 4 batches. That should equal 128 loads of laundry, and I still have 6 bars of soap, half a container of Borax and about 1/3 box of the washing soda! If it works like they suggest, this could save us a lot of money. We do so much laundry that it adds up fast. Once we use it a few times, I will write up a post about how well it works (or doesn't work). Of course the best part perhaps is that when we finished, the grater needed only to be rinsed in hot water and it was clean and ready for next time! No scrubbing or soaking required.

It was a pretty nice day today. Not too terribly cold yet, and plentiful sunshine. Little #5 and I spent almost two hours playing outside today while #1 and #2 were inside busy with their schoolwork. We played on the swing and the slide and he rode around on his toy car thing. I checked my shade garden; unbelievably the kale and collards are still growing, though the carrots never did make roots, and I only found two onions showing greens - I'll work on harvesting them later. Then we made the rounds to the flower patch in the back corner of the yard. Last year (2014) I planted a bunch of wildflower seeds meant to attract hummingbirds and butterflies. We got a tall patch of an assortment of flowers. I fully expected them to come back this year, but the lonely flower garden only yielded some black eyed Susan flowers this year. Of course it still has tulips and irises, strawberries, and now raspberries as well. Today we discovered that the black eyed Susan plants had dried up and were ready for seed harvesting. I looked up some videos, and #5 and I got a pair of scissors and a sandwich container. I cut the heads off of the stems into the plastic container, then closed it up and had #5 shake it. It seems to be the best way to get the seeds out of the heads without impaling fingers on all those sharp bits of stem! Now I'm wondering how to get the chaff separate from the seeds. Anyway, we should have plenty of seeds to take to wherever we end up moving to. As always, we also left a few seed heads on the plant and sprinkled some of the seeds throughout the garden to make sure they come back there next year too.

Black Eyed Susan flowers (Rudbeckia Hirta)

I sent a message on Facebook to a lady I met last year at a seed swap who had given me some seeds. I wanted to let her know how her seeds had made my garden what it was this year. She gave me a packet simply labeled in permanent marker "Blue #2" - pumpkin seeds. This year we decided to plant one pie pumpkin (Baby Pam Pie Pumpkin) - so we could make pie. One larger variety (Connecticut Field Pumpkin) to produce carving pumpkins for Halloween, and one decorative oddball variety (we chose Blue #2). The pie and carving pumpkin plants each produced just one pumpkin each. The pie pumpkin actually went bad on the shelf before I got around to using it - so much for being a winter squash good for storage. The Connecticut Field pumpkin missed Halloween when my mom picked up seven over-ripe pumpkins from a local farmer - they needed to be carved as they were already going bad. We still have our big CT Field pumpkin, waiting to be cut up and cooked.

But that mysterious "Blue #2" pumpkin holds yet more mysteries. When it first set fruit (the first of all three varieties to do so), it was yellow. I thought, perhaps in the same way a tomato starts green and then turns color as it ripens - the pumpkin will turn blue when it's ready to be picked. So we watched as it grew bigger and bigger and bigger. Not just the fruit, but the whole plant! A vast majority of the garden this year that took over the lawn, covered the sidewalk, branched toward the street, and eventually ended up wrapping back through the yard under the tree and back toward the house again... was this "Blue #2" pumpkin (though some was acorn squash too). Every few feet it had flowers, and in total by the end of September when we pulled up the vines due to freezing temperatures, we got six pumpkins from the vines throughout the yard, and had to throw out at least half a dozen more that were just too small to save. Of the six, one set to rotting right away, but we still have five left. They continued to ripen in the house after they were picked, and now 4 of the 5 look like this one below. They are a deep orange color with yellow/orange splotches and randomly placed warty bits. They're short and wide, with a recessed stem (they'd catch rain water and I was worried they'd rot off if I didn't dry them or tip them out in the garden). They're ribbed, and most interestingly - they look waxed. I've never seen a pumpkin like this before. I've looked online and I can find winter squash varieties that are of similar color, or similar shape (but never both), but I have yet to find any kind that has this waxy appearance. I'm sure it's got to be some kind of natural cross from the blue pumpkin the seeds came from and some other variety she happened to grow that year. So I sent her some photos and a description of the plant and pumpkins, again thanking her for a wonderful gardening experience, and the beautiful produce. I'm told that blue pumpkins are quite tasty, so I'm excited to try cooking one of these down to see if it can be eaten straight out of the skin, or if it would make a good pie filling. I'm hoping to save them for Thanksgiving, but I'm going to end up playing with one before that so I know if this is going to make a mashed-potato style dish or a dessert. I'll definitely be saving seeds, but because we grew so many other varieties this year (acorn squash, delicata squash, spaghetti squash, CT Field pumpkin, Baby Pam pie pumpkin, zucchini, etc.) I doubt that what we grow next time will be the same as what we got this time. They're truly beautiful pumpkins. At first when they were still growing (and yellow turning orange) I admit I was a little disappointed that we weren't getting blue pumpkins... but seeing them now, I'm so glad we got something so much more interesting!

Our very cool waxy cross pollinated "blue" pumpkin

The weekend before last, while out on a walk, I happened upon some wild milkweed pods. I'd seen them in the same place last year too, but thanks to Mother Nature and I'm sure more than just myself playing with tossing seeds - they now grow in profusion in that area. I paused long enough to collect a few pods, breaking open others to let the seeds float along to assure more next year, and leaving many still on the plants. I want to be able to have milkweed wherever we move to. I never seem to notice these plants when they're flowering, so I have no idea what color the flowers are. I just see the pods and know that they're good for butterflies.

Sustainably harvested wild milkweed

On another walk in that area, this time with #3 and #5, we found a second patch of milkweed plants, and I let #3 pick some more pods. Again, we are always careful to assure that we take only a few and that most of the seeds are left for natural spreading to be enjoyed next year and the years to come. She has them set aside to release at my parents' house so they can feed the butterflies as well.

Well, I'm a little disappointed with the gardening community of the internet right now. Yesterday I officially opened the free seed trade publicly and posted it in an online gardening forum. I was thinking that people would enjoy the idea of trading in their extra seeds for something new. Apparently, I was way off. I've gotten negative comments on my post, even nasty emails! People seem to be furious that I would ask for seeds and postage. I don't have enough seeds to just give everything away for postage. I only have a limited amount of seeds - and every free-seed-for-SASE offer I've ever found usually has a notice afterwards that it's closed due to the overwhelming response. That's great that there are people out there willing to participate, but not so great for those not "in the know" who don't find the offer in the first week. That's why I set mine up as a seed trade-in... so I wouldn't run out of seeds and have to turn people away. As far as asking for people to send an envelope with postage... Can you imagine at 50-cents per stamp, how much it would cost me if even just 100 people wanted free seeds? I can't afford that. I'm paying for the little resealable plastic bags that I'm shipping seeds in.

I have now removed the link from the main menu on the left side of the webpage, and I'm not sure if I will be putting it back up again. I thought that if people didn't want to participate, they'd just move along to the next seed offer. Again, I was wrong. I didn't realize there was so much animosity out there when people can't get something for absolutely nothing. I thought it was a pretty good deal... you send me your extra seeds (and I have no say in what I get, despite offering a wish list) and you get to pick seeds from my collection...

For anyone who still wants to send in some seeds and get some in return, the offer is still open. I won't be advertising it, and I don't think I'll be sticking around that garden forum either.

Unfortunately, this experience has really taken the wind right out from my sails, so I have decided not to offer the 2015 tomato seed mix as a free SASE offer. Instead I will put them up as part of the free seed trade, so they will be available to people - but not just for an SASE offer any more. My apologies to anyone who was looking forward to that... the trolls have ruined it for everyone. :(

Today was Tony's first evening shift where he wasn't home for dinner. My kids usually cringe when they hear Mom is cooking ... I'm excellent at baking. Cookies, pies, cakes, bread... but cooking is a whole different story.

So I relied on my trusty Crock Pot to get me through. Here's what I made:

Sorry the photo seems blurry, the heat fogged up the camera. It turned out a little more moist than I had hoped, but we solved that by using a slotted serving spoon. Much to my delight, between the five kids and I, only #5 didn't finish his plate. Three of the kids went back for seconds, and there was still enough left over for Tony when he got off work (though not much). He complained it was bland, but everyone else seemed to enjoy it. It smelled delightful. It's encouraging when the kids tell me dinner smells great and they are excited to eat it. Tony works late again next Friday (a week from tomorrow) so I'm going to have to come up with another dinner idea.

We picked this squash up from a local farmer, and I have no idea what kind it is. It's small and red...

Small red squash

And warty too.

Warty

And it was pretty hard to cut in half!

Hard to cut

But I did manage to get it open! It looked a little funny inside, but I figured if I cooked it thoroughly, it should be fine.

Success!

Ten minutes in the microwave and it was ready to eat. It tasted almost like a potato. I wish I'd have added some butter, but it was pretty good. I shared it with #5 for lunch. He insisted on using the rind as a bowl to eat out of. We saved seeds. Hopefully we can get some more growing next garden. The farmer grew several varieties, so who knows if the seeds are cross pollinated. We will try them anyway. if anyone knows what kind this might have been - please let me know!

Today I spent several hours cleaning out three buckets of tomato slop. I now have a lot of tomato seeds on the screen drying.

2015 Tomato mix seeds drying

With three buckets done, I have one bucket of fermented slop left to deal with, plus three more buckets with rotting tomatoes (not smashed up yet), and one more bucket of green tomatoes. I'm hoping to get this batch dried out and then start offering them to people through a SASE offer.

The kids enjoyed Halloween. They each designed a Jack-O-Lantern (well, I helped with #5, he was more interested in pulling the "guts" out). Below is a photo - from top/left to bottom/right we have #3, #4, #2, #1, and #5. We didn't do much for trick-or-treating. We went around the mall, then to Costco, and out to visit both grandparents' houses.

2015 Halloween Jack-O-Lanterns

We still have two pumpkins out at my parents' house that didn't get carved (from a local farmer). At home we still have one Connecticut Field pumpkin and five or six of those odd hybrids - they were supposed to be blue pumpkins, and they have the right shape, but they're a waxy dark orange with lighter orange streaks and green patches. I plan to make a lot of pumpkin pie. How cool that this year we can have fresh pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving with our very own home-grown pumpkins!

I took advantage of an eBay promotion for a bunch of free listings in combination with a new advertising option on Bonanza to list all of my store items on eBay.... So I now have over 500 eBay listings. Please feel free to check them out here! Some end in a week, but most of them are 30 day listings that won't end until the end of November / beginning of December.

Uncharacteristically, I have allowed myself to start day-dreaming about what it might be like if we buy the house on 20 acres I have my eye on. I know the odds aren't in our favor. We've never gotten a loan before, and only recently acquired our first credit card. I've always been a firm believer that if you can't afford it, you don't need it... so building credit is something new to me. Anyway - daydreaming... I keep looking at the Google maps satellite view of the property, imagining where I'd put the garden, where the kids' play set will go, the possibility of several gardens to grow all kinds of food, and maybe even chickens some day. Tony has decided to wait a month and re-evaluate our finances to decide when it would be appropriate to approach the bank or real estate agent. I worry that the dream house won't be on the market anymore, but I have to keep reminding myself... if it's meant to be, it will be there and things will line up. With his new promotion and more work hours, hopefully we can get things going in the right direction.

I've been unusually stressed lately between Tony's extra hours (and this is just day 2), and the possibility of a forced move in our future. In the meantime, the most I can do is try to down-size my "stuff" to make moving easier, and put some money in our pockets to help with the move.